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In 1974, the State of New York banned nunchuku, the Okinawan martial arts weapon popularized in the US by the classic Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon. On Friday, 44 years later, Brooklyn federal court judge Pamela Chen ruled that the ban is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The plaintiff in the case is a fellow named James Maloney who had been busted nearly 20 years ago for possessing nunchaku in this home. From the Associated Press:

The ruling went over the history of the ban, and said it “arose out of a concern that, as a result of the rising popularity ‘of ‘Kung Fu’ movies and shows,′ ‘various circles of the state’s youth’ — including ‘muggers and street gangs’ — were ‘widely’ using nunchaku to cause ‘many serious injuries.’”..

Maloney, a professor at the State University of New York’s Maritime College, said some of his motivation was outrage. “How could a state simply ban any and all possession of a weapon that had a long and proud history as a martial-arts weapon, with recreational, therapeutic and self-defense utility,” he said.

Maloney also wanted to teach a form of martial art using nunchucks that he created, which he calls “Shafan Ha Lavan” to his sons, the ruling said.

The Defense Department’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program has demonstrated the Radio Frequency Vehicle Stopper, an experimental "direct energy weapon" that causes car and boats' electronic engine control units to enter into an endless cycle of rebooting, immobilizing the vehicles until the weapon is switched off.
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Dick's Sporting Goods has decided to destroy its stock of AR-15 rifles. If you'd like to do the same, I suggest you refer the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)'s official guide to destroying "machineguns" that would surely be effective to render AR-15 rifles completely useless. The key tool is "a cutting torch having a tip of sufficient size to displace at least ¼ inch of material at each location."

• Each cut must completely sever the receiver in the area indicated by the diagonal lines.

• The receiver must be completely severed in each area indicated with a diagonal torch cut.

• Cutting by means of a band saw or cut-off wheel does not ensure destruction.

If the last you saw of fighting wheeled robots was Robot Wars, well, things have moved on in the last few years! Check out these single-minded sumobots, as fast as the eye can see and ruthlessly optimized to their purpose.

With the slower, more implicitly purposeful Boston Dynamics bots, there are usually two responses: firstly, "holy shit!", and secondly, "something something welcome our new robot overlords." Their resemblance to mammal forms is both appealing and unnerving.

But here there is only "holy shit!" These lightning-fast, plainly unlovable little fellas are a good reminder of what the reality will be: the same overlords as before, but wielding weapons so tiny and fast that you won't even see them coming.

Looking like an iPhone rollout or creepy TED Talk, this sci-fi PSA from the group Stop Autonomous Weapons looks at a possible near future of autonomous drones trained to kill a specific human target. Read the rest

Duke Robotics brings a fully robotic weaponry system to an airborne platform. TIKAD, which is a proprietary development of Duke, uses the delivery of a unique suppression firing and stabilization solution. TIKAD allows governments to utilize completely new capabilities against terrorist groups and reduce the number of deployed ground troops, and therefore, the number of casualties.

This vintage (2011) clip shows Australian TV host Karl Stefanovic describing his home defense strategy: keeping a "long stabby thing" by the side of the bed. Cohost Lisa Wilkinson reports having a "swordy thing." Correspondent Georgie Gardner also has a long stabby thing, the one you suspected. Nevertheless, there has been some discussion of what Karl's long stabby thing might be; my money is on a four-foot poker, useful for fending off not only burglars but also logical positivists. Read the rest

In weaponry, as in life, sometimes the best things are free. Take the lowly IKEA pencil. No, literally take one or more of the ubiquitous free writing utensils. Then watch this video on how to weaponize them. Read the rest

Sling bullets, used by Roman soldiers in an attack on a fort in Scotland some 1800 years ago, appear designed to whistle in flight. A battery of them could be terrifying; or perhaps simply very loud and annoying.

These holes converted the bullets into a "terror weapon," said archaeologist John Reid of the Trimontium Trust, a Scottish historical society directing the first major archaeological investigation in 50 years of the Burnswark Hill site.

"You don't just have these silent but deadly bullets flying over; you've got a sound effect coming off them that would keep the defenders' heads down," Reid told Live Science. "Every army likes an edge over its opponents, so this was an ingenious edge on the permutation of sling bullets."

Two extraordinary facts concerning the small bullets with holes (now dubbed type IIIs) also emerged. First, they could be successfully slung in small groups of three or four to create a form of grapeshot. This had been independently confirmed by T Richardson in his work on Roman sling-bullets at the Royal Armouries. Even more intriguingly, the mysterious holes proved to confer an aerophonic quality: in flight, these lead shot whistled, or more accurately gave off a mechanical buzzing sound eerily reminiscent of an agitated wasp (click below to hear for yourself). Remarkable as it sounds, the simplest explanation for this design modification is that it represents an early form of psychological warfare. To put it another way, the Roman attackers valued the terror that hearing the incoming bullets would instil in the defenders.

Insacco's research team just reported that one of the weaponized species, the Javelin Sand Boa that was likely introduced to Italy by the Greeks during wartime, has survived in Sicily after not having been spotted for nearly 100 years.
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The fun-loving Chinese journalists in this segment manage to out-VICE VICE. 侣行 On the Road is billed as “a homemade outdoor reality show” featuring an "extreme couple" who love adventure. The pair and their team got some great footage of an open-air weapons market in Sadr City. Read the rest